ext_7331 ([identity profile] a-t-rain.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] a_t_rain 2010-08-21 02:31 pm (UTC)

Re: oh please do tell what it means...

Well, it helps to know something about the conventions of the sonnet, and of Elizabethan love poetry in general. Here (http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/stella9.htm) is a more typical example. There's a whole vocabulary of comparisons that are meant to describe the ideal girl -- hair like gold, voice like music, complexion like marble (or roses), etc., etc., etc. By the time Sonnet 130 is written, it's so familiar that it's cliched.

So, initially, the poet seems to be describing the anti-ideal -- a girl who fits none of those conventional metaphors and similes. And then the twist comes in those last two lines you just quoted: the problem isn't with the girl, it's with the whole vocabulary of poetry -- all the other poets are lying, because no woman lives up to all that "false compare." ("Any she" = any woman.)

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